CASE STUDY #10: CO AND RACE AND POVERTY

Foundation Funding of CO: How the Liberty Hill Foundation improved the lives of Korean immigrant laborers in Los Angeles.

The Liberty Hill Foundation, based in Los Angeles, provided a seed grant of $4,000 to Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates (KIWA) in 1993 that helped spur the organization's development and catalyzed significant multi-racial CO efforts. KIWA has had extraordinary results in working with low-wage workers. The following illustrates how strategically chosen small grants for CO can have very substantial impacts.

As a young and enthusiastic union organizer with the successful Justice for Janitors campaign in the late 1980s and 1990s, Roy Hong came into contact with many of his fellow Koreans who were working in low-wage service industries. He also became keenly aware of a contradictory but recurrent theme - the image of the Korean immigrants, both within and outside the Korean community, as successful and financially secure business owners.

Aware that 70% of Korean immigrants are laborers working for someone else, Roy was bothered by what he calls the myth of the "model" immigrant community. He also saw the potential for a meaningful organization that could represent low-wage Koreans and build a progressive voice in the Korean community. So, in 1992 he and a few friends created the Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates (KIWA), the first and only organization of its kind in the country.

Roy and other KIWA organizers began very simply by visiting Korean immigrants working in the garment and restaurant industries to find out their problems, needs and hopes. They made individuals aware of their rights and educated them about labor codes in this country. Soon KIWA set up a legal clinic to help individuals solve work place grievances and from there connected one worker with another who, in turn, supported and organized still others.

Through a process of experience and education by KIWA organizers, many Koreans soon realized they were not alone when it came to earning substandard wages and working in unhealthful and often dangerous conditions.

Through persistence, patience and, above all, vision, KIWA has become the voice for the working poor in the Korean community. KIWA has organized pickets, press conferences and boycotts against the most negligent firms employing Korean immigrants. They have researched the abuses of such companies and publicized them both in the English and Korean press.

Recognizing that Koreans are not alone in suffering from exploitation in low-wage industries, KIWA has also begun organizing Latino immigrants who work side by side with their Korean counterparts, helping to build a unique multi-racial partnership between two communities that are often pitted against each other.

From the reinstatement of employees who are wrongfully terminated to an industry-wide labor agreement with the Korean Restaurant Association, KIWA has helped workers to protect themselves, expanded their rights, and improved the quality of lives for themselves, their families and the entire Korean community.⁶⁵

Liberty Hill's 1993 seed grant was crucial in getting KIWA off the ground. Since then, the foundation has made larger grants from its Fund for a New Los Angeles to strengthen this important organization.